The prophylaxis of cancer / Charles H. Mayo.

  • Charles Horace Mayo
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The prophylaxis of cancer / Charles H. Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ing briefly from Dr. L. S. Pilcher, who described the condition as follows: It is in the lawless proliferation of preexisting epithelial cells in luxuriant, irregularly arranged masses that invade underlying and surrounding tissues, permeating, destroying them, and finally themselves attaining a mass which can no longer be adequately nourished by an accessible blood supply, and which itself then falls into central decay, while at the periphery the process still goes on, that cancer consists. We must consider the irritation of groups of epithe- lial cells as the primary origin, and that such an arrange- ment occurred as a prenatal inclusion (this is ques- tioned), or postnatally as a result of some mechanical or inflammatory condition. There is then a cell prolif- eration which becomes cancerous only when there is infiltration of the tissues. From all the information which has been presented on the subject it is evident that there often exists a precan- cerous condition. The unproved type, that of prenatal displacement, we are unable to recognize. The postnatal type we recognize at least in the presence of tumors of a temporary, benign character in their more regular and uniform arrangement of structure and cells, such as warts of the skin, papillomata of the bladder and fibro- mata of the breast, as well as cell inclusions which occur in the scars of inflammations, or burns and the results of long-continued local irritation to tissues. These growths resemble the embryologic development of cells merely in the power of cell multiplication and in the continuance of type in the metastasis and trans- plantation of the growth. Youth, because of the vigor- ous growth of the cells, is less subject to cancer, yet more susceptible to poisons, but the active lymphatics in youth cause rapid dissemination of disease when it occurs. Bashford shows that, while no race of mankind is exempt from cancer, the predilection for the disease in certain countries is more from local irritation than from the peculiarities of climate, soil and diet. I shall mention only a few well-known sources of irritation as a cause of special cancer. For instance, carcinoma of the mouth is rare in European women but common in men, yet in Ceylon and India women suffer greatly from cancer of the mouth because of the chewing of betel-nuts and hold- ing the plug in the mouth. In this country leukoplakia
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